1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to light emitting diodes (LEDs) and more particularly to mounting LEDs to a heat sink.
2. Description of Related Art
Light Emitting Diodes (LED) have generally been regarded as electronic components and as such have generally been mounted to printed circuit boards (PCB) using various soldering techniques, such as reflow soldering of surface mount packages, for example.
Advances in LED technology have lead to improved optical efficiency at lower manufacturing cost, and higher power LEDs are now available for use in general illumination applications, such as household and commercial lighting. Such applications have established a need for simple, low-cost mounting solutions for LEDs. Soldering may not be a suitable mounting and/or connection solution for lighting industries, which have traditionally relied on relatively low-tech connection and mounting technologies. Introducing solder technologies into such industries may represent a barrier to wider adoption of LED lighting components.
LEDs are also substantially more compact than traditional lighting devices such as incandescent and florescent bulbs, which presents a problem for heat removal, in that an LED has less surface area available for convective heat transfer to the surrounding air than traditional light bulbs.
When mounting an LED, there is a need to transfer heat generated by the LED to a body which is able to dissipate the heat to a surrounding ambient environment, thus maintaining the LED at a safe operating temperature. Mounting techniques used for conventional light sources (for example, incandescent bulbs, fluorescent tubes, etc) are generally not appropriate for use with LED devices, as conventional light sources generally do not have the same thermal transfer requirements as an LED. The majority of mounting techniques for conventional light sources are not useful for mounting compact LED sources (for example a powerful LED may be 1 mm×1 mm or smaller).
Accordingly, there remains a need for methods and apparatus for mounting LEDs.